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Coated Stents' Market Stabilizes

Last year's fourth quarter was the worst in several years for drug-coated heart stents, new data show, but the coated stents' market share is no longer falling.

Stents are tiny scaffolds that prop open arteries clogged by heart disease. The fanciest, most profitable kind -- those coated with drugs to prevent reclogging -- were used in 88% of stentings as recently as mid-2006.